Line | Jacob Burckhardt’s view that Renaissance |
| European women “stood on a footing of perfect |
| equality” with Renaissance men has been repeatedly |
| cited by feminist scholars as a prelude to their |
(5) | presentation of rich historical evidence of women’s |
| inequality. In striking contrast to Burckhardt, Joan |
| Kelly in her famous 1977 essay, “Did Women Have |
| a Renaissance?” argued that the Renaissance was |
| a period of economic and social decline for women |
(10) | relative both to Renaissance men and to medieval |
| women. Recently, however, a significant trend |
| among feminist scholars has entailed a rejection |
| of both Kelly’s dark vision of the Renaissance and |
| Burckhardt’s rosy one. Many recent works by these |
(15) | scholars stress the ways in which differences |
| among Renaissance women—especially in terms |
| of social status and religion—work to complicate |
| the kinds of generalizations both Burckhardt and |
| Kelly made on the basis of their observations about |
(20) | upper-class Italian women. |
| The trend is also evident, however, in works |
| focusing on those middle- and upper-class |
| European women whose ability to write gives them |
| disproportionate representation in the historical |
(25) | record. Such women were, simply by virtue of |
| their literacy, members of a tiny minority of the |
| population, so it is risky to take their descriptions of |
| their experiences as typical of “female experience” |
| in any general sense. Tina Krontiris, for example, in |
(30) | her fascinating study of six Renaissance women |
| writers, does tend at times to conflate “women” and |
| “women writers,” assuming that women’s gender, |
| irrespective of other social differences, including |
| literacy, allows us to view women as a homogeneous |
(35) | social group and make that group an object of |
| analysis. Nonetheless, Krontiris makes a significant |
| contribution to the field and is representative of |
| those authors who offer what might be called a |
| cautiously optimistic assessment of Renaissance |
(40) | women’s achievements, although she also stresses |
| the social obstacles Renaissance women faced |
| when they sought to raise their “oppositional |
| voices.” Krontiris is concerned to show women |
| intentionally negotiating some power for themselves |
(45) | (at least in the realm of public discourse) against |
| potentially constraining ideologies, but in her sober |
| and thoughtful concluding remarks, she suggests |
| that such verbal opposition to cultural stereotypes |
| was highly circumscribed; women seldom attacked |
(50) | the basic assumptions in the ideologies that |
| oppressed them. |